September 2018, Typhoon Jebi smashed into the Japanese coast with gusts of nearly 200 kilometers
an hour, flinging fuel tankers into bridges, inundating airports, and inflicting 12.6 billion
dollars of damage. Officials at the Taiwanese consulate in Osaka, in the heart of the typhoon,
valiantly fought through the storm to evacuate stranded citizens. A few days later, a story
claiming the Chinese embassy had dispatched buses to rescue Taiwanese went viral. A flood of
criticism, much of it deeply personal, poured on Taiwan's representative in Osaka. Ten days after
the typhoon, the representative had hanged himself. But there never were any buses from
the Chinese embassy. The story, originating among pro-Beijing trolls in Taiwan and given life by
the Communist Party-owned tabloid Global Times, was wholly invented. The story was one of hundreds
of examples of disinformation targeted at the Taiwanese government in the past two years.
In the lead up to the 2020 presidential elections, Beijing would deploy a campaign to control
Taiwanese narratives, whether through outright deception like the Osaka consulate case,
misrepresentation like in reporting on Hong Kong protests, or simply highlighting achievements of
the Communist Party and stoking pan-Chinese nationalism. China's influence in the Taiwanese
elections serves as a case study in how authoritarians make use of digital media to accomplish
their geopolitical goals. Over the next 30 minutes, we're going to go in depth with the Taiwanese
elections and the recent Polish elections as well, to understand what this new version of
information warfare looks like, how it succeeds, how it fails, and why. Taiwan, officially the
Republic of China, has a history and present intricately entwined with that of China,
officially the People's Republic of China, since both governments in Beijing and Taipei
claim to represent all of China. Beijing calls Taiwan a province, and Taipei refers to the
territory it administers as free area of China, free area of the Republic of China, in contrast
to the mainland. China has been large in each of Taiwan's elections, and much of each campaign
focuses on competing views of one day uniting with China, or forging an independent Taiwanese
culture, and one day an independent state. Representing a vision of pan-Chinese unity
is the Chinese Nationalist Party, or KMT, from its Chinese initials. They ran Taiwan as a
dictatorship for nearly half a century before transitioning to democracy in the 90s. In 2000,
they lost an election to the more independence-minded Democratic Progressive Party, or DPP.
The KMT, or Chinese Nationalist, to this day, maintains close relations with Beijing and pushes
an agenda of greater cooperation and economic ties with the mainland. The DPP, or more independence-
has a base that comes from the non-Mandarin speaking majority of Taiwan, and favors the
cultivation of a unique Taiwanese identity, and is the only party besides the KMT to have held
the presidency. In 2016, Tsai Ing-wen, who helped to draft DPP's foreign policy, which emphasized
separation from China, defeated the KMT in the presidential elections by 25 points. In response,
China suspended official communication with Taiwan and began an economic pressure campaign.
Following guidance from Beijing's National Tourism Administration, Chinese tours to Taiwan
dropped by 40%, ravaging an industry that's responsible for 8% of Taiwan's economy.
China also released a slew of incentives to peel away Taiwan's best and brightest.
Tsai's popularity began to sink, aided by resurgent Chinese information operations.
China was pretty late to the game for information operations, especially when compared to Russia,
but by 2018, they had established a massive online empire. According to the CCP's propaganda
department, quote, information is a battleground, and quote, competition for news and public opinion
is a contest over discourse power. CCP outlets witnessed an astronomical rise in popularity,
especially on Facebook, which is banned in China, and now Chinese-owned outlets account for seven
of the nine most-followed news pages anywhere in the world. Chinese state TV took to YouTube as
well and has since amassed billions of views, becoming the leading source of news in Mandarin
anywhere. Traditional media came under the party's thumb as well. The Chinese Communist Party
bought a $37 million stake in Wanwan, a food conglomerate, which over the next decade added
to its portfolio to leading Taiwanese television channels, CCTV and CCITV, which soon became
vehemently pro-KMT. The frequency of articles after this takeover criticizing Beijing dropped
by 70%. The Financial Times uncovered in a report that the Taiwan Affairs Office, an arm of Beijing's
government, had a say in every single headline and report. Throughout 2018, much of what Beijing
was demanding attention on was the astronomical rise of Han Kuo-yu. A longtime member of parliament,
Han took on the unlikely task of unseating the dominant DPP from Kaohsiung, Taiwan's second city
and a base of DPP support. With a populist campaign promising economic rejuvenation,
and with extensive use of social media, Han's popularity soared. Unlike other populist social
media politicians, Han was unwaveringly cordial, refusing to speak negatively of rivals or even
their platforms. A Facebook fan page of Han's soon became one of Taiwan's largest and coordinated
rallies with hundreds of thousands of followers. Taiwanese media from all parties spoke of a
Han wave. CCTV and CCITV, the two television channels that take orders from Beijing,
gushed over Han and the KMT. According to a Taiwanese security official, China mobilized
300,000 cyber operatives, twice the size of Taiwan's army, to sway opinion in Taiwanese
social media. Adopting tactics from Russia's troll farms, the operatives blasted Tsai.
Disinformation abounded, like a rumor the president intended to sell part of Taiwan to the United
States. A 2018 survey by the V-Dem Institute at the University of Gothenburg in Sweden,
found that only Latvia and the United States were targeted for more disinformation in 2018
than Taiwan. The KMT swept local elections. Not only did Han win the mayoralty in Kaohsiung,
but the KMT, having lost the national election by 25 points just two years earlier,
won local elections nationally by 9%. Tsai's, quote, separatist stance has lost her the support
of the people on the island, crowed China Daily, a CCP-owned newspaper.
As the role of China in the 2018 elections became clear, DPP supporters grew enraged. In 2019,
tens of thousands rallied in Taipei against Chinese-controlled media. The proximate cause
was the start of protests in Hong Kong against the Chinese extradition bill, inspired by events
in Taiwan, as well as the 30th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre, both of which were
downplayed by KMT-allied media. Taiwan began to lean heavily on the platforms that had long been
engines of Chinese disinformation, forging partnerships with Twitter and Facebook.
DPP, against accusations that the KMT was using it to muzzle dissent,
passed legislation aimed at discouraging meddling from China.
In the week leading up to the presidential election on January 11th, 2020, according to
our research, CCP-owned media planted 178 stories about Han and the KMT in traditional Chinese,
the script used in Hong Kong and Taiwan, but not on the mainland, in addition to 25 videos in
Mandarin. The overall sentiment of this content when referring to Han was plus 0.6, on a scale
where negative one is most negative and plus one is most positive, and 80% of scores are between
0.1 and negative 0.1. Those commenting or replying on videos responded in an exceptionally positive
manner as well, with those writing in traditional Chinese, suggesting they're either Hong Kongers
or Taiwanese, expressing a sentiment towards Han of plus 0.42. By contrast, China's 142 stories
on Tsai in traditional Chinese and 21 Mandarin videos expressed an average sentiment of negative
0.32, with traditional Chinese commenters responding with an average sentiment of negative 0.2.
But these story counts, as well as engagement counts, were fairly low by Chinese state media
standards. The Taiwanese election occurred the week after COVID-19 was first described,
which quickly dominated the focus of CCP outlets, with two leading nominally private Taiwanese
broadcasters taking orders from Beijing as well. Local proxies could fill in the role that
otherwise would have been played by the CCP. More covert operations, however, proliferated.
Twitter later detected 170,000 bots spreading Chinese influence. The intelligence service,
NSB, found that the Facebook page that helped to coordinate Han's early election
was created by the Communist Party. And working with Facebook, they removed that page along with
260 others created by the Communist Party, but masquerading as local Taiwanese. Of half a dozen
viral disinformation claims that we tracked linked to these pages, none wound up receiving more than
7,000 shares. On January 11th, 2020, voters in Taiwan overwhelmingly opted for Tsai,
who received 57% of the vote to Han's 39%. In the end, Taiwan successfully fought back against
interference from a larger and more powerful adversary with little outside influence on the
election detected. But in doing so, they gave sweeping powers to the state to define the limits
of reasonable dissent, possibly silencing good faith debates on the extent of cooperation with
China, one of the most important issues in every Taiwanese election. China, despite its massive
advantage in terms of manpower and funding, launched a sloppy and ineffectual campaign online,
distracted by the looming threat of COVID, unable to create viral content, and unable to stay ahead
of Twitter's bot detection system. Taiwan's victory over disinformation, though, could very
well be illusory. With Han already trailing by 20 points 100 days before the election,
and anti-Chinese sentiment running high following the Hong Kong protests,
China's digital army may have simply counted its losses and refocused on higher priorities.
Four months later, and halfway around the world, in the brick medieval town of Krakow,
the archbishop, whose predecessors include John Paul II, delivered a homily marking the 75th
anniversary of the Warsaw uprising. Quote, we also know that our land is thankfully not affected
by the red plague, he intoned, referring to communist rule. But that does not mean there
is no one that wants to control our souls, our hearts, and our minds. This new plague is not
Marxist-Bolshevik, but born out of the same sphere of neo-Marxism. Not red, but rainbow.
Both the content of the archbishop's homily, the supposed threat of social liberalism,
and the symbolism commemorating Poland's fight against fascism, foreshadowed the political axes
in the country's 2020 election, one that inflamed internal intentions to a level not seen since the
fall of communism. With both sides staking out staunchly anti-Russian positions, Moscow launched
a massive campaign to engender outrage from each side against each other. In thousands of stories,
Russian media warned Poles of the coming end of traditional values, or the rise of fascism.
The election proved a case study in information operations towards destructive as opposed to
constructive ends, not supporting a party, but stirring unrest throughout the country.
The response of the ruling Law and Justice Party, PIS, dousing dissent and muzzling independent
media, reveals how combating disinformation, like combating terrorism a decade before,
can be a pretext to support authoritarian goals.
PIS began in 2001 as a standard center-right party allied with Christian Democrats in the EU
and won the presidency for the first time in 2005. But disaster struck in 2010 when much of
PIS leadership died in a plane crash on its way to a memorial service in Smolensk, Russia,
and the party's surviving leaders afterwards adopted an increasingly conspiratorial and
nationalistic tone. Though vehemently anti-Russian, PIS's strident defense of traditionalism fit
perfectly with Moscow's new self-portrayal as a bulwark against the EU and its, quote,
homosexual propaganda. With Russian outlets dominating YouTube and Russian bots dominating
Twitter and Facebook, similar far-right populist movements gained traction throughout Europe.
In this wave, PIS leader Andrzej Duda captured the presidency in 2015,
beating the center-left Civic Platform, or PO, coalition. Duda's first term in office was marked
by a series of moves to bring independent institutions under the rule of PIS. The newly
PIS-dominated legislature refused to seat duly appointed judges from the previous administration,
instead filling the highest courts with partisan loyalists. Claiming threats of foreign influence,
Duda ousted the head of the state broadcaster, Televizja Polska, and editors of public media
organizations, such as Gazeta Wyborcza and Polityka, in favor of PIS loyalists. A bipartisan
report showing that the Smolensk disaster was a result of pilot error was discarded,
and conspiracies about foreign agents' involvement became state canon. As Duda and PIS increasingly
sought to merge party and state, the center-left PO began to portray the PIS as threatening to
establish an authoritarian regime. PIS's ultra-nationalistic language lent itself to
charges of fascism, as did new laws curbing free speech, such as one criminalizing any
implication of Polish involvement in the Holocaust. Following the ousting of a pro-Russian
president in Ukraine in 2014, Russia began a massive multi-year, multi-language campaign
to portray the NATO-friendly nationalists in the old eastern bloc as fascists and heirs to those
who fought alongside Nazis against the Soviet Union. Nearly 60% of all instances of disinformation
from Russia in Polish portrayed Duda's PIS party as fascist or fascist sympathizers.
In February 2019, PO's rising star, Warsaw Mayor Rafał Trzaskowski, signed a bill
that would include same-sex education in school curriculums. With a dominant grasp on state media,
PIS whipped up homophobic hysteria. The next month, a small town in the country's conservative
southeast declared itself a, quote, LGBT ideology free zone. By August, 30 towns and four of Poland's
16 provinces declared the same. The backdrop made the 2019 parliamentary election among the most
divisive in Polish history. With both the PO and PIS taking strident anti-Russian stances,
Moscow turned towards inflaming sentiment on both sides. Sputnik Poland published 399 pieces
supportive of the LGBT free zones and 265 pieces accusing the government of cozying up with fascists.
Journalist Martin Ray uncovered dozens of links between the Kremlin and nationalists on the
rightmost edges of PIS' coalition, while a report from the Oxford Institute on Computational
Propaganda confirmed that bots were acting to further polarize the electorate. But with near
total control over state media, PIS was able to expand its popular vote majority in the parliamentary
elections. With the success of the 2019 Rainbow Plague campaign, PIS doubled down in the 2020
presidential elections, which pitted Duda against Warsaw mayor and PO candidate Trzaskowski.
Trzaskowski sought to make the election a choice between democracy and authoritarianism. Duda
aimed to cast the vote as one between foreign imported gay rights and Polish tradition.
The election was characterized by widespread disinformation, the most prominent case coming
when Russia hacked the Polish War Studies Academy website on April 23rd, allowing the hackers to
publish forged letters by a Polish general calling for soldiers to fight, quote, the American occupation.
Over 57 public Facebook groups reposted links to the letters,
and average Facebook users followed suit in proliferating false stories.
Like Russia's I.O. campaigns overall in Poland, the purpose was not to support any one candidate,
but to create a sense of chaos and imminent violence. Other posts parroted Polish political
leaflets, warning of scandals and poverty if Trzaskowski was elected over Duda. Other content
claimed LGBT activists set Polish flags on fire, associating the anarchic behavior with Trzaskowski.
On the other side, posts mentioning Duda characterized the current European environment
under his leadership as a chaotic storm. Duda was also accused of brutalizing public life of Poles,
a dry run for a fascist takeover. In the two weeks leading up to the second round of the
presidential election, Polish language media from Russian outlets saw a large spike in incendiary
terms. References to fascism, excluding references to Russia's Victory Day parade, which was held
during this period, saw a 20% spike with an average sentiment of negative 0.76, and audiences
responded similarly negative with negative 0.52. References to LGBT and related key terms
increased by 11% in the same period, with an average sentiment expressed of negative 0.22,
and audience response of negative 0.17. Russian outlets portrayed both candidates, Duda, negative
0.17, Trzaskowski, negative 0.15, and both coalitions, PIS, negative 0.26, PO, negative 0.21
in negative terms. On July 12th, 2020, voters in Poland re-elected Andrzej Duda for a second
presidential term with 51% of the vote to Rafał Trzaskowski's 49%. Maciej Kieślowski, a professor
at the Central European University, called the election, quote, a death blow to Poland's liberal
democracy. With anti-Russian sentiment high throughout Poland, especially as Moscow began
a campaign to blame the Second World War, and probably on Poland, Russia instead turned to
destructive information operations, amplifying divisive voices, sowing distrust among the
population, and undermining institutions. Though Russia plays large in Duda's conspiracies, Duda
was happy to oblige, parroting Russian talking points and tactics on the EU and gay rights.
Even among anti-Russian audiences, Russian I.O. was able to further Russian narratives.
Despite Duda's own dalliances with disinformation, he was able to deploy fear of disinformation to
win closer NATO support and to silence the Senate home, much as autocrats had done with the fight
against terrorism throughout the early 2000s. As we approach the 2020 U.S. presidential election,
Russia and China command dominant positions on social media. The top YouTube publisher
is the Kremlin, which owns the platform's most-watched news network, even in English,
and seven of the nine most-followed news pages on Facebook,
all of them in English, belong to the Communist Party of China.
In Taiwan, we saw how the Communist Party wove itself into the workings of an opposition party,
but facing massive public backlash and the growing unpopularity of the opposition,
retreated as the presidential election approached. Efforts to stem disinformation
notched up significant victories through partnerships with social media companies,
but legislation failed to win bipartisan support and thus shake off the appearance of censorship.
In Poland, we saw how Russia adapted to an environment without support on either side
by amplifying dissent. Fellow travelers against gay rights and four wild conspiracies helped to
ensure civil strife, anti-EU sentiment, and strain all Western European alliances in Russia's near
abroad. Successful information warfare is adaptable, and with so much social media power
and advanced targeting techniques, anti-democratic forces can easily toggle between constructive
campaigns to support a party and destructive campaigns to sow chaos. Only through coordination
between apolitical institutions and the social media platforms, we find true progress against
information warfare while maintaining our democratic values.